Chapter 8: The Day of the Surgery
The surgery was scheduled for a Tuesday morning at eight o'clock.
My mother wanted to walk in on her own.
She wore her good blue blouse, the one she saved for church and for appointments that mattered, and she carried her own bag.
I walked beside her through the sliding doors of the surgical center and she did not take my arm until we reached the check-in desk, and even then it was less leaning and more a quiet choice to be close.
The procedure itself took just under two hours.
The surgeon came out to the waiting room at ten-seventeen and told me it had gone smoothly.
The capsule had been removed intact.
My mother was in recovery and asking for water and for me, in that order.
I was allowed back at ten-forty.
She was propped up on two pillows, an IV line in her left hand, her hair loose around her shoulders.
She looked smaller in the hospital gown.
She also looked lighter.
As if something that had been pressing on her from the inside had finally, literally, been lifted.
"How do you feel?" I asked.
"Like someone reached in and took out the thing that didn't belong." She considered this.
"Good.
I feel good."
I sat in the chair beside her bed and took her hand.
"The surgeon said you'll be sore for a few days.
No lifting.
No gardening for two weeks."
"Two weeks." She made a face.
"Mom."
"Fine.
Two weeks."
We sat quietly for a while.
A nurse came in to check her vitals, made a note on the tablet, and left without a word.
Through the window the sky was a flat bright blue, the kind of blue Miami does in November when the humidity finally breaks.
"I've been thinking," my mother said.
"About what?"
"About the forty thousand dollars." She paused.
"I used most of it to pay the mortgage and the medical bills.
But there's still some left.
About six thousand.
I kept it in a separate account.
I was always afraid to touch it."
"You don't have to do anything with it right now."
"I want to give it back." She turned her head to look at me.
"To whoever it belonged to.
Is that possible?"
I thought about the offshore accounts.
The client funds.
Four million dollars redirected through twelve women's bodies.
"I'll ask Claudia," I said.
"I think it can be directed to the recovery fund.
The federal case has a restitution process."
She nodded.
"Good." A pause.
"I don't want anything of his inside me.
Not even money."
I squeezed her hand.
She squeezed back.
"Maya." Her voice dropped slightly.
"Are you going to be all right?
Not your mother.
Not the case.
You."
I looked at our joined hands.
Her knuckles, swollen slightly with age.
The thin gold band she still wore for my father, twenty years after his passing.
"I think so," I said.
"I think I will be."
"You're going to have to rebuild a lot."
"I know."
"You're good at building things.
You always were." She smiled, and it reached her eyes in a way it hadn't in months.
"You built a whole life out of nothing after your father died.
You can do it again."
"I had help," I said.
"You had me," she said simply.
"You still do."
The nurse came back in to start the discharge process.
Forms to sign, instructions to read, a prescription for pain management and a follow-up appointment in ten days.
My mother listened carefully and asked two questions and thanked the nurse by name.
On the way out, she stopped in the corridor.
"Wait," she said.
She reached into her bag and pulled out the St.
Jude prayer card she kept in the front pocket.
She had carried it for as long as I could remember.
She looked at it for a moment, then placed it carefully on the small shelf beside the door — the kind of shelf that holds a box of tissues and a cup of pens.
"For the next person," she said.
We walked out into the November afternoon together.
May you like
She took my arm at the door, and this time it wasn't a quiet choice.
It was something warmer than that.
